The best since the Seventies

Holland are famous for never winning a World Cup but crediting themselves with a couple of moral victories for playing the best football. They are entitled to look back on Euro 2000 in the same way. The tournament will no longer end in a giant orange party, but, largely thanks to the hosts, it deserves to be remembered as one of the great football-fests. Even France's Emmanuel Petit has said: 'This tournament is stronger than the World Cup two years ago.'

Images of Italy prevailing in the orangeness of the Amsterdam ArenA, of Portugal's despair at that golden-goal penalty, and of Zinedine Zidane transcending anything seen in Europe since Johan Cruyff will linger long in the memory. There were good teams, there were bad teams, but there were very few bad games.

Even the occasional stinker like England v Germany was only depressing for its poverty of talent and imagination, and not for the petty indiscipline and mean-spirited negativity which disfigured earlier tournaments. Euro 2000 was confirmation that rule changes have got the game into good shape for the next century. There were heroes aplenty, from Zidane to Zlatko Zahovic, and no real villains. And that includes Italy.

There can be little doubt that Holland were the true hosts. The Belgians have never added much to the gaiety of nations, and here both their fans and their football were flat, functional and quickly forgotten. Dutch fans and players, on the other hand, seemed to be competing with each other in a friendly fight to see who could be the more vibrant. In the final analysis, given that Rotterdam this evening is still likely to be a fairly orange experience even though the dream ending has been shattered by Italian reality, the fans probably won.

It was certainly revealing to be in the Grand Place in Brussels, the square which earlier in the tournament had witnessed the water cannon versus En-ger-land contest, on the day of the Portugal-France semi-final. Portuguese fans, wandering the streets in flags and face paint, were slightly outnumbered by French supporters who had noisily taken over a few bars and pavement cafes. By far the biggest presence, however, was that of the Dutch in their regulation orange.

'I am sorry, I am embarrassed to be Dutch,' an Amsterdam waitress whispered as a battered orange bus full of supporters in matching orange bowler hats brought traffic to a standstill outside her cafe before the second semi-final. At that point it was rather more acutely embarrassing to be English. Just as a German banner at the France-Portugal match had pointedly alerted the German FA to the fact that this was how football should be played, the boisterous but never less than courteous Dutch could be held up as an example to the obnoxious element among England followers. 'That,' the message might read, 'is how you support a national team.'

There are those who will claim it is a pity such colourful and committed support did not get the final it deserved, or, more contentiously, that Holland's positive attacking play was effectively mugged by football's dark forces in the Amsterdam ArenA. But this simply will not do. Complaining of cynicism in Italian defending is like objecting to the heat in the Tropics. Rules have been re-framed over the last decade to discourage teams from skulking in their own half and stifling play, but Italy were severely penalised against Holland for the bits of their game which were unduly uncompromising.

They effectively had to play 90 minutes with 10 men and conceded two penalties in normal time. One cannot advance a moral case for a team which managed to miss five penalties in a semi-final, and neither can one dismiss Italy as anti-football when they defended an adverse situation so heroically. Despite Italy's numerical disad vantage they actually had three attacking forwards on the field late in the game in Alessandro Del Piero, Marco Delvecchio and Francesco Totti, so it is hardly even the case that they simply got men behind the ball.

Dino Zoff's side may not win many friends playing like that, but very few defences could surrender so much possession and territory and still prevent a goal. The idea that every team should play fantasy football is just that, fantasy.

You can only measure the brilliance of attacking sides like France and Brazil against teams who don't give away goals for the asking. Holland 6 Yugoslavia 1 was entertaining, but Italy 0 Holland 0 was instructive. Football needs its light and dark, chiaroscuro as they call it in the country which gave us catenaccio . It will be interesting, to say the least, so see whether France's attacking reputation emerges intact after today's final.

One goal is all it might take to undo Italy, and Holland were unlucky to the extent that Dennis Bergkamp hit a post early in the game and Francesco Toldo made a couple of vital stops, but by the end, hindered in no small way by Frank Rijkaard's mystifying substitutions, the clockwork orange machine had wound down to the extent that it was harmlessly spinning in ever-decreasing circles.

So if France prevail it will be a victory for attacking football but if the game goes Italy's way, it will still be a victory for football. France v Holland would inevitably have been a disappointment anyway, just as France v Portugal did not produce the feast everyone was expecting. It is also worth asking whether Holland were ever all they were cracked up to be, since their most impressive performances in this tournament were against a weak Danish side, a France B team and a shambles from Yugoslavia. Against a full-strength and capable Czech team they needed a lucky late goal to secure victory, and against resolute Italy they ran out of ideas.

France should do better, even if their own semi-final suggested they might struggle against an organised defence. Their key advantages are pace and movement, and the player to push open the door is Zidane. If he takes the ball standing still, as he did too often against Portugal, he will impress with his balance and close control but ultimately play into Italy's hands. If he can take the ball at pace, forcing defenders to commit themselves and using his sublime distribution to get France on the move, the favourites should prosper.

Either way, one hopes the tournament breaks a recent sequence and gets the final it deserves, since there is no doubt it has been the most enjoyable, skilful and memorable meeting of nations since the early Seventies. Here are a few reasons why.

FOOTBALL

Not quite Brazil in 1970 perhaps, but some truly fabulous passing, movement and finishing from those such as Portugal, France, Spain and Holland.

Who can forget England v Portugal, Yugoslavia v Slovenia or Yugoslavia v Spain? It could be argued the competition was devoid of drama or upset in its early stages, with no real shocks in the group stage and every quarter-final going to form, but the two semi-finals certainly corrected that impression. Portugal's reaction in the aftermath of the golden-goal penalty awarded against Abel Xavier might have been unseemly, but there was no denying the raw passion of the moment. No wonder Uefa are considering scrapping the golden-goal period already. It did not seem possible the Amsterdam semi could rival the Brussels one, but it did, and it produced an upset into the bargain. Italy winning by playing like the old Italy should not really count as an upset, but no one expected them to reach the final and perhaps they would not have done so had the Dutch managed a slightly better penalty ratio than one from six attempts.

STADIUMS

Holland's stadiums are state-of-the-art, Belgium's less so, but all are people-friendly arenas situated conveniently close to town or city centres. All were accessible by tram, train, bus or on foot with very few problems. For the Amsterdam semi-final on Thursday we left our city-centre hotel at 4.15pm for a 6pm kick-off, parked outside the ground for a fiver 15 minutes later, and were able to drive away easily within 45 minutes of the final whistle. Try doing that at Wembley.

THE FANS

Stadiums were mostly full for matches, even Norway v Slovenia attracted a decent crowd and generated a jolly atmosphere. Audiences were probably the most colourful ever, thanks to Holland's orange order, and inside stadiums there was very little trouble. It is obviously true that some alleged England supporters misbehaved in Brussels, as did some Belgians, some Turks and some policemen, but more or less the same thing will be going on in Benidorm all summer without making the news bulletins. Boorish English behaviour does not begin on the cross-channel ferry or at the commencement of a football tournament. Its existence and tolerance at home is the unwritten story every time the government or Uefa wring their hands over the latest shaming example of non-assimilation with more civilised cultures. Real football fans are fed up of this particular social problem. The England supporters who got into games behaved impeccably, even those who found themselves in the Romanian end at Charleroi.

REFEREEING

There was no blizzard of red and yellow cards, no inflexible directive from the governing body, and few important players missed vital matches for disciplinary reasons. Officials were mostly unobtrusive and refereeing was simply not an issue in the way it has tended to be at recent tournaments. That is not to say there were no controversial decisions, but from the dismissal in the second semi to the outstanding spot and brave standing of his ground by Igor Sramka of Slovakia in the first, most were correct. Of the ones that were not, such as Alpay Ozalan's rather harsh dismissal in the Turkey-Portugal quarter-final, diving or play-acting were usually to blame. Referees are getting better at spotting obvious dives like Alan Shearer's against Germany, but they have a growing problem with fouled players who exaggerate injuries to get opponents dismissed. Uefa should consider retrospective video evidence and mandatory suspensions for unsportsmanlike behaviour.

HISTORY

All great tournaments need to change the status quo to an extent, to leave the world a slightly different place. Post-Euro 2000 the hotspots on the European map are all Iberian or Mediterranean. Germany, England, all of Scandinavia and even Holland, to some extent, are woolly mammoths wandering the frozen north. At least Holland played football in their tournament. What game England, Germany, and the others were playing is anybody's guess.

THE GRAND GESTURE.

Erich Ribbeck jumped before he was pushed, Frank Rijkaard and the estimable Humbert Coelho quit immediately after their semi-finals. Odd to think that the coaches of Holland and Portugal have gone but Kevin Keegan - 'I don't see any reason to offer to resign, I think we can be optimistic for the future' - is still in charge of England. Apparently the FA have been shocked by the amount of criticism their coach has come in for, which just shows what a dear old bunch of complacent little-Englanders the denizens of Lancaster Gate still are. But don't worry, Euro 2000 will be over by tonight and another Premiership season is just around the corner.